Approaches to Teaching Writing

1. Attitude competence 2. Cognitive competence 3. Skill competence Related to the skill competence, students are required to be able to write several types of texts. Based on the core competence and basic competence for Grade VIII of junior high school, they have to acquire the knowledge of a narrative text. They should write a narrative text in the form of a fable and pay attention to the social function, structure, and language features. The table below shows that the narrative text, particularly a fable, is one of texts that should be mastered by junior high school students. Table 1: Core Competence and Basic Competence of Writing Skills for Grade VIII Junior High School Semester 2 According to Anderson and Anderson 1997, a narrative is a piece of text that tells a story and has purposes to entertain or inform the reader or listener. It is a story of a series of events. The language features of narrative texts according to Anderson and Anderson 1997 are: specific characters, time words that connect events to tell when they occur, verbs to show the actions that occur in the story, and descriptive words to portray the characters and setting. Kompetensi Inti Kompetensi Dasar 4. Mengolah, menyaji, dan menalar dalam ranah konkret menggunakan, mengurai, merangkai, memodifikasi, dan membuat dan ranah abstrak menulis, membaca, menghitung, menggambar, dan mengarang sesuai dengan yang dipelajari di sekolah dan sumber lain yang sama dalam sudut pandangteori 4.18. Menangkap makna teks naratif lisan dan tulis, berbentuk fable pendek dan sederhana penggunaannya. The next matter is related to characteristics of students. Junior high school students can be categorized as teenagers. The age range of them is between twelve and eighteen that is also called as puberty Brown, 2001:91. Brown 2001:92 states that “The “terrible teens” are an age of transition, confusion, self- consciousness, growing, and changing bodies and minds.” They are in the transition between childhood and adult. They try to figure out their identities. Harmer 1998:39 states that the most important thing for teenagers is the search for individual identity, because this search provides the key challenge for this age group. As a result, in the teaching process, the teacher should concern students’ characteristics. Brown 2001:92 states that one of the most important concerns of the secondary school teacher is to keep students’ self-esteem high by 1 avoiding embarrassment of students at all costs 2 affirming each person’s talents and strengths 3 allowing mistakes and other errors to be accepted 4 de-emphasizing competition between classmates, and 5 encouraging small-group work where risks can be taken more easily by a teen. Another matter that needs to be concerned by the teacher is success of teaching writing itself. The teacher should design the teaching and learning writing based on students ’ learning styles, their needs, and their characteristics as teenagers. It should support them to develop their writing skills. Related to this, Brown 2001: 346-355 mentions some principles for designing writing techniques, they are: 1 applying some practices that can develop students as good writers, 2 using the process and product approach in the same proportion,